Las Vegas it is one of the best known destinations for anyone interested in gambling oh great entertainment shows. Located in the middle of Mojave Desert in Nevada, the “city of sin” is now a symbol of unbridled life – also thanks to the numerous films and novels set in this place. But, contrary to what it might seem, it’s not all rosy: for years many casinos have been in the hands of underworld and today the city has to face a water problem unprecedented. So let’s see the two souls of this tourist destination, trying to understand its origin, why it is located in the middle of a desert and what are the main challenges it faces.
Where the city of Las Vegas is located and what it looks like
Let’s start by clarifying a key aspect, namely that the Strip, that is, the famous street with all the casinos, it is not located in Las Vegas: the city of Las Vegas in the strict sense is a normal metropolis (capital of Clark County in Nevada) in which almost 3 million people. The Strip, on the other hand, is an area adjacent to the city but that is it controlled directly by the countytherefore it is not under the control of the mayor and therefore does not belong to any city. Obviously it is clear that those who go to Las Vegas city anyway do so to then go and see the casinos, both those in the city and those along the Strip. Consider that overall there are more than 156 thousand hotel rooms able to host every year over 40 million tourists. The city can be reached by car, train or plane, and once there tourists who want to gamble are spoiled for choice: according to the latest available data, in 2023 there were 109,783 slots, 415 poker tables And 4126 including roulette, bingo and other games.
It goes without saying that the amount of money is enormous: we are talking about a collection of around billion dollars a month.
Why is Las Vegas in the middle of the desert?
The answer to this question is actually quite simple, in the sense that Las Vegas originally was an oasis in the middle of Mojave Desert. In fact the name “Las Vegas” from Spanish and can be translated as “the meadows”, precisely because there was a green area here in the past! For this reason, over time the area was inhabited by various peoples, above all as an intermediate stop for crossing the desert between the cities of Salt Lake And Los Angeles.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, however, it was a mostly uninhabited area and around 800 people. The revolution came in 1905, when a railway network to connect Salt Lake and Los Angeles which needed a intermediate point to refill the steam train with water: what better place than the Las Vegas oasis? It took the trains about an hour to refill the water and so it wasn’t long before commercial businesses began to spring up near the station to entertain passengers during this break.
In 1911 Las Vegas it officially became a city and, although at the time the gambling it was illegal, it actually began to spread under the table. The real turning point, however, came in 1931, when the president Franklin Delano Roosevelt he built the Hoover Dam and, in parallel, surrendered Gambling is legal in Las Vegas. This was a turning point for three reasons:
- those who worked on the dam often went to Las Vegas because it was the only population center with entertainment in the area, and many even moved there with their families;
- the Hoover Dam would have provided the necessary quantity of water and energy to the city for the years to come – although we will return to this point later;
- Legalized gambling paved the way for the city’s casino business, which at this point was ready to take off.
Why it’s called “sin city”: the birth of Sin City
Since day zero, casinos in Las Vegas were built and operated mostly by people with criminal records… anything but clean, such as Guy McAfeeex-Los Angeles cop wanted for gambling and prostitution rings. Or, another famous example, Bugsy Siegelthe mafioso who opened the restaurant in 1947 Flamingo, the first maxi-casino in Las Vegas which then gave rise to the creation of many other gambling giants.
Attention: not all mafiosi ran illegal businesses. In fact, the casinos in themselves were legal, therefore legitimate businesses, even if many did not declare everything they earned to the tax authorities and used the casinos for money laundering. But this is another matter.
However, the success of Las Vegas was not only linked to the casinos, but also to entertainment that these offered to their guests both from a sporting point of view, as numerous boxing matchesboth from an entertainment point of view. One of the most popular formulas was that of residency, that is, where on rotation some artists lived and performed exclusively in Las Vegas. He was undoubtedly an icon of this movement Elvis, but over the years U2, Frank Sinatra, Celine Dion, Elton John, Usher and many many have also become symbols of it.
Control of large companies
Years pass and the power of criminals gradually begins to diminish in favor of real companies which, one after the other, acquire most of the casinos. Retracing the exact chronology of events is not useful here because there have been dozens and dozens of companies, acquisitions, mergers, bankruptcies and name changes. So for convenience it is better to give an overview of what the situation is today. At the moment in Las Vegas there are two companies that dominate. The first is the MGM Resorts that he owns 9 among the main casinos in the southernmost part of the Strip, namely:
- Air;
- Bellagio;
- Cosmopolitan;
- Excalibur;
- Luxor;
- Mandalay Bay;
- MGM Grand;
- Park MGM;
- New York New York.
While the rival, the Caesar’s Entertainmenthe has some 8 in the same street, but in the northernmost portion, that is:
- Caesars Palace;
- The Cromwell;
- Flamingo;
- Harrah’s;
- Horseshoe;
- Linq/O’Sheas;
- Paris;
- Planet Hollywood.
Two companies, essentially, control half a strip each in a rather clear way, and this also explains why some casinos – obviously if from the same company – are directly connected to each other, allowing customers to go from one to the other without even having to go out.
Where does Las Vegas get its energy from?
To power Las Vegas you need a gigantic amount of energy: think that if we look at the Earth from space, the Strip is the brightest point on the entire planet. And this shouldn’t surprise us: the Sphere at times of maximum consumption requires the same amount of energy that would be sufficient to power it 21 thousand homes in Nevada.
Various web portals claim that Las Vegas is the first city to be powered entirely by renewables and so what casinos would have zero impact. Well, that’s not exactly the case: what is 100% powered by renewables is the public sector of the citytherefore offices, street lamps etc., but not homes, companies and even less casinos. Also because among other things, as we said before, the Strip does not even fall under the control of the city of Las Vegas, and therefore regardless it cannot be counted in these data.
To date, the Government has not made public data regarding the energy mix that powers the Strip, but we can take the Nevada data as a reference to get an idea, given that three-quarters of the state’s electricity consumers are located in Las Vegas. Vegas. In 2023 the 61% of electricity came from fossil fuels, above all natural gaswhile the 39% from renewables. Of this 39%, Hoover Dam hydroelectricity is a tiny fraction because most of the energy produced is used by neighboring states. Most renewables are therefore energy-related solar. In fact, some casinos, on a small positive note, are trying to be increasingly sustainable, installing large quantities of solar panels, like the MGM Grand which built a 280 thousand panel solar park called Boulder Solar I.
Where does Las Vegas get its water from
Having clarified the energy issue, the last aspect I would like to talk to you about is that of water, given that most of the water used here is taken from Lake Meadwhich is the artificial basin created thanks to the Hoover Dam that we were talking about before and which is fed by the Colorado River. The point is that in recent years the The average level of the River Mead is constantly decreasingand so that’s why we’re talking about a water crisis in Las Vegas. Then of course, they are implementing solutions to recycle water and reduce consumption, but the situation is still very delicate.
